Call...... Finally completing something of milestone significance, Xiao Bailang played the newly made clay jar, and the crisp dangdang sound was louder than the bells of heaven. For more than ten days, the brothers in the industrial department who had been eating and living in the kiln shed tears - it was not easy, and they had experienced many failures in making tires, drying in the shade, glazing, and firing temperature control, and finally achieved positive results. There are at least complete sets of household goods for large-scale pickling of seafood, soy sauce, and production of light chemicals, and there is hope for flush toilets in the future.

"The days when I crossed the country and couldn't make my own pottery jar and completely relied on the people of the Ming Dynasty are gone!" Xiao Bailang made a sonorous sound by the clay jar. I put on a POSE, but unfortunately Tintin was not there and didn't give the intake shot.

Although the principle of the pottery jar is simple, this kind of large-diameter relatively thin-tired pottery is the most difficult to make, and the traverser has made small-diameter ceramic pipes and jars in the past, and there is no experience in such a large size. The Zuihou industrial department checked countless materials and found all the craftsmen who could burn pottery in Lingao, and then completed the firing of the pottery jar. This is not an easy job, according to the potter who helped, only the pottery kiln near Qiongshan County has such a capacity in the entire Qiongzhou Prefecture. They were also surprised to be able to prototype it.

The basic pottery workshop of industrialization has initial production capacity. The brickyard itself has all the conditions for making and firing kilns, as long as the temperature can reach 800 degrees Celsius.

With such large and small pots, the chemical industry group can finally start their great process of local chemical industry. Among the most urgently needed chemicals of all traversers, sulfuric acid and nitric acid are the most widely used, especially nitric acid, which is used in the manufacture of most of zha drugs and pyrotechnics, from the crossing artifact nitrocellulose to the most dangerous **.

To make nitric acid, nitrate is necessary. Before there was no synthetic ammonia industry, nitric acid had to have nitrate to be manufactured. China's natural nitrate ore is distributed in Sichuan and the northwest, and there is no nitrate in the south, relying on the collection of nitrate to refine nitrate. It's dirty and inefficient. If it weren't for the timely arrival of a lot of saltpeter from the Guangzhou advance station, the chemical department would have been reduced to the role of pouring out the pigsty of digging toilets.

There was enough saltpeter -- all of which were smuggled and exported from Guangdong, and the quality was very good. There are a lot of black fire yao stocks in hand, so this saltpeter can be used to make nitric acid.

How is nitric acid done? Almost everyone who has seen the mysterious island knows that nitric acid can be made from sulfuric acid, and if you want nitric acid, you have to have sulfuric acid.

Ji Sihui thought about it, modern industrial sulfuric acid production has three different sources, one is the by-product of the coal coking industry, the other is sulfur plus saltpeter, and the third is pyrite. Each of the three methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, as well as its own soil process, but for the traverser, there is no need to play at this stage - there are no raw materials. Fortunately, Guangzhou has already purchased soap alum, although the production of this process is very small, but fortunately, the process is extremely simple, and it can be produced with the laboratory equipment they have at hand.

Using soap alum to refine alum oil is the most traditional and simplest method of manufacturing sulfuric acid. The ancients also had a small scale of use of alum oil, mostly in the field of metal processing, at the end of the Ming Dynasty benefited from the introduction of Western missionary technology, some people have made nitric acid and aqua regia, but the people who made it obviously did not realize what the specific role of these things is, if it takes time, maybe it will create a new era of Chinese chemistry. However, the slave-owning regime, anxious to "establish a unified state," soon put an end to this possibility.

The production efficiency of the dry distillation method of soap alum is very low, and the sulfuric acid produced is only about 10% of the raw material, but it is better than nothing, and it is purely a temporary substitute. This distillation method is extremely polluting and a bit dangerous, so the chemical team chose a place with the right wind direction to build a factory in the Bopu Heavy Industrial Zone. Distillation began with a dry distillation method, and all participants were given labor protection overalls and masks from the chemical plant, and after a few days, there were 20 kilograms of concentrated sulfuric acid.

With concentrated sulfuric acid, nitric acid can be made. Once again, distillation is used, saltpeter is added to sulfuric acid, and then slowly heated to use the volatility of nitric acid to obtain concentrated nitric acid. This process would have released a lot of heat, and for the first time, the ice cubes made in the cold storage of the Toyojo wheel came in handy - the ice-water mixture was used to mix the condensation of nitric acid.

With nitric acid, the traversing artifact of fire cotton was immediately brought out. Fire cotton is not only more powerful than black fire, but also very haode propellant.

After being approved, Li Di began to try to manufacture smokeless zha medicine for the army, cotton wool. It stands to reason that this is a matter for the chemical group, but the chemical team is skeptical that nitrocellulose can be made. Li Di of the navy suddenly stopped working on steam engines, and volunteered to take over the matter of making nitrocellulose -- on the condition that after the nitrocellulose was put into mass production, it must be supplied to the navy first.

First get a few clay jars and the acid and alkali needed for a production, and take out 15 kilograms of cotton. Caustic soda relied on inventory, and it had to be approved by the Planning Commission, but fortunately, the ZHA medicine was a major military matter, and the Planning Commission approved it very quickly.

Because caustic soda and nitric acid are corrosive, Li Di put on the chemical gloves and body that he borrowed from Ji Sihui.

Fire cotton requires very pure absorbent cotton, and generally ZHA pharmaceutical factories buy ready-made products, and the traverser can only rely on their own hand-made.

The first is to process the cotton, tear it open, and pick out visible impurities, such as pebbles, dead leaves, etc. Wash the cotton with water until the effluent is clear. Put the cotton in a ceramic pot, add water until it can just be submerged, then add caustic soda equivalent to 2%~5% of the weight of the water to the pot, cover and boil, and simmer for 10 minutes. Cool, rinse with plenty of water, and rub for about 10 minutes. I put the washed くオで cotton on clean paper and dry it outside in the sun. The remaining lye is then poured into the waste caustic barrel. Concentrated nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid were prepared into mixed acids for esterification in the ratio of *:*. Although it is the dry season in Lingao now, the air humidity is still a little larger, the mixed acid has cooled, and the cotton has not been dried, so it seems that there will be a dryer in the future. The military industry of the Eighth Route Army was dried with a fire kang, which can be learned.

Li Di put more than half of the dried cotton into the mixed acid, pressed it, stirred it, covered it, looked at the watch, and after 10 minutes, took it out, put it aside, and put the rest of the cotton in, and mixed it together twice after finishing.

Put the waste acid into the waste acid barrel and continue to stabilize the treatment. It took 6 hours to finally make the first batch of cotton wool, but it was still wet, so I only dared to dry it in the shade, and I had to spread it out as much as possible, otherwise it would be troublesome.

Until the evening, there was finally a dry cotton wool, 16 kg, take it to the artillery team to shiyan! They're pretty much a weapons research institute now.

These days, explosions are heard from the shooting range of Bopu every day, and you can often see Lin Shenhe, Bai Yu and others with green smoke all over their bodies and black faces sitting by the river panting.

Li Di came to the shooting range with the newly made cotton wool, and suddenly heard a loud noise, only to see the half of the body tube of a cannon flying in the air, which frightened him a lot. After a long time, I saw Lin Shenhe crawl out of the trench covered in black, and nodded again and again and said to a few people who came out of the back:

"Our artillery barrels have a better life than expected."

Li Di hurriedly ran over, handed him the cotton wool, and said, "This is my newly made cotton wool, please Shiyan of the artillery team." Use it carefully, the power of this toy is not comparable to that of Black Fire Yao!! ”

But seeing Lin Shenhe's puzzled face, he asked, "Are you strong cotton or weak cotton?" ”

"Strong cotton?" Li Di looked ignorant.

"I'm sweating, big brother, you don't even know this to make cotton wool?" Lin Shenhe was taken aback, "The performance of cotton wool with different nitrogen content is completely different. ”

"I think it's weak cotton." Although Bai Yu is a major in weapons manufacturing, he also knows a little bit about pyrotechnics, "The nitric acid of the soil method is esterified by the soil method, and it is difficult to make a high nitrogen content of fire wool." ”

"Give it a try." Li Di is also a little unconfident now.

After half an hour, Lin Shenhe found Li Di with a dark face and a strong smell of gunsmoke, and said angrily: "The cotton you made, it's okay to use it to make paint or glue." ”

"I'm doing exactly what the book says!" Li Di shouted loudly, "Standard laboratory procedures. ”

"The problem is that this one can't detonate at all."

"Probably not enough nitrogen." Bai Yu said.

"It's the poisonous man of Verne again."

Verne described the manufacturing process of cotton wool as very simple, and the actual production of cotton wool is not easy to make in a simple environment. Especially in the esterification process, it is necessary to control important indicators such as nitrogen content and viscosity quite accurately by controlling many factors such as nitrifying agent composition, reaction temperature, reaction time, etc.

How difficult is it, there are many pamphlets and books on the method of making the medicine in the Jishu database of the traverser, and even the soil method of making * and Hei Suojin have it, but there is no cotton wool. It can be seen that cotton wool is not an easy thing to make.

In the industry, the fire cotton is divided into No. 1 strong cotton, No. 2 strong cotton, No. 3 weak cotton, explosive rubber cotton, fire cotton wool, varnish cotton, celluloid cotton and other grades, and the nitrocelluloid cotton made by the soil method can reach the level of celluloid cotton at most.

"So much nitric acid and caustic soda are wasted." Li Di was very annoyed. Chemical products are already in a tight position.

"It would be nice if there was a level of celluloid cotton that could be used as a propellant. It's a bit bad though. Lin Shenhe thought for a moment, "Wu Yunduo said in his memoirs that at that time, they reloaded the bullets, one was to buy scrapped film films, and the other was to buy scrapped film and use celluloid as propellant. ”

"Do you want to try the propellant?"

"This can't be used, it has to be processed into powder and then pressed firmly." Bai Yu shook his head, "Store it first, and then batch it when you have the equipment." Let's ask the chemical department to release the mercury as soon as possible. Those rifles are hard to do without mines. ”

(Note: It is impossible to make qualified nitrocellulose with Li Di's method.) If there are a variety of analytically pure agents in a laboratory environment, then it is not a problem to make celluloid cotton. However, the formal production of nitrocellulose is much more complicated, in addition to the nitrogen content is difficult to control, the process of removing acid in cotton is not simply washed with water. In the early days, nitrocellulose was completely abandoned by the army because of the incomplete removal of free acid and repeated accidents. ）